As a term, however, it only came to the public’s attention in the Spring of 1992 in the build-up to the wars in former-Yugoslavia. It has been gaining universal recognition ever since, but, despite the constant references, no-one knows what the term really means.
Partly, this is because there is no precise legal definition of what it entails. As a result, and despite it being used euphemistically in UN Security Council Resolutions and ICTY judgments over the years since 1992, ‘ethnic cleansing’ has never been recognised as an independent crime under international humanitarian or human rights law.
Even today, the United Nations’ Office on Genocide Prevention[1] cannot provide a definition, stating that “The precise roots of the term or who started using it and why are still uncertain.”[2]